Latin America´s ITC Predictions 2009

Albeit at a slower pace in 2009 than in 2008, Latin America will remain one of the fastest-growing ICT markets of the world.

The global economic crisis will no doubt hit Latin America’s ITC market strongly during 2009, particularly during the first two quarters of the year. Be it by the selffulfilling effect of user expectations, or because of a real crunch on capital, it is little but naïve to underestimate the impact of such a strong global force. To predict that this will happen is not the objective of this document, but more the underlying context of the document. IDC Latin America Predictions 2009 is created in a effort to find out and present the key inflection points of the regional ITC market within such a context.

Albeit at a slower pace in 2009 than in 2008, Latin America will remain one of the fastest-growing ICT markets of the world. Don’t be mistaken. The current economic scenario plays a decelerating role in IT spending. But in times of stress, new dynamics are created, new behaviors emerge, and some changes accelerate. During 2009, Latin America will see that the clash of optimism with pessimism brings new challenges and opportunities to both vendors and users.

Polls done in October of 2008 by IDC, showed that one-third of Latin American companies were downright pessimistic about IT spending, saying they would decrease IT spending in 2009. This is a historical low compared to our annual survey over the last six years. By December, however, a new survey of enterprises, albeit a different group, suggests pessimism has receded a bit, to 20% of companies. Closer to ‘normal’ if there is such a thing in this emerging market. These are certainly times of increased uncertainty. And therefore it is particularly hard to predict what will happen. However, we believe that these hard times will put pressure on definitive trends, causing inflection points in the ICT market to accelerate, and spawning a takeoff in some markets, an adoption leapfrog in others, and signs of maturity in yet others.

IDC presents these Top 10 predictions that address the forces we believe will play an important role in the transformations we will see during the year 2009:
1. Expect new dynamics as a result of the global crisis and weaker local currencies.
2. From Dynamic IT to “Cloud Computing”: Adoption catches up with innovation in 2009.
3. The use of everything “as a service” will accelerate in 2009.
4. On-site/off-site collaboration encourages unified communications, and the battle for the UC channel begins.
5. Market maturity combined with economic pressure will shift the “new” vs. “maintenance” software spending balance.
6. As the pursuit of better intelligence continues, focus will move from “IT to manage the information” to “IT to manage the business”.
7. Telecom services bundling and 3G data devices will expand with the penetration of high speed Internet.
8. Mobile standards move toward an equilibrium in 2009: WiFi, WiMax, and 3G compete and complement each other creating a more holistic solution.
9. Informal and gray/black market activity will expand in the consumer IT space.
10. WEB interaction becomes ‘tropical’ as Social Networks and Enterprise 2.0 Applications collide.

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